Catholic school division budget sees cuts

The Regina Catholic School Division is declaring a balance for its 2019-20 budget, but not without some cuts.

Bob Kowalchuk, chair of the school division, said the challenge with this budget was controlling the board’s expenditures against a high amount of growth and the level of provincial funding.

This year, the province replaced $54 million of the education fund, which was cut in 2017.

“But that takes us to where we were two years ago,” said Kowalchuk.

The school board’s projected enrolment is an all-time high of 12,223 students, an increase of 282 from last year, or about another school of children.

In order to address such high enrolment, the division has included extra staff support, such as 17 new full-time equivalent teachers and five education support professionals.

Additional support also includes a First Nations and Métis Inuit (FNMI) high school adviser and technological supports.

Despite the additions, Kowalchuk added that the school board had to make some cuts.

“We think we’ve done the best we can with the circumstances we have,” he said. “We sincerely hope that the (provincial) government down the road will be able to find a way to move beyond those replacement dollars so we can see some longer-term growth.”

Cuts are being made primarily to the Speech-Language program maintenance; $93,295 will be reduced from the instructional operational budget and a further $203,775 from Plant Operation.

Kowalchuk said speech services will still be offered to students.

“We’re moving more of the support back to the classroom teachers,” said Kowalchuk, who added: “It’s not that we’re not going to provide the service (but) it’ll be provided in another way.”

Moving forward, Kowalchuk said he hopes to see more funding to the Catholic School Division.

“While we appreciate the funding returning back into the system, we all recognize there is a need for more funds going into the future,” he said.